There's a basement

Thursday, 5 March 2015

I got the idea for this post while cleaning my two small cupboards yesterday. This is how it looked.

I'm sure you have done this at some point and been shocked and surprised by how much useless stuff lying in there untouched, things which you had forgotten even existed, some so outdated and good for nothing (I found CDs in there - ancient stuff right?) all taking up space in there while you've been worrying about having less space to put your currently important stuff.

Analogus to cleaning a cupboard another such important spae which needs cleaning and sorting is our psyche. Notice how even the mention of that term brings in images of some mystic, supernatural realm to the mind, like those of a "psychic" who can help you talk to your dead son from another mystic super land all thanks to thousands of years of religon and mystic theories which have put the psyche outside the realm of reality into some untouchable mystic supernatural world.

For most a thought such as cleaning psyche is perplexing, clean it of what one might ask, the answer is throw out retrograde ideas, beliefs, re-evaluate one's values and experiences and the conclusions which one has internalized because of those. The human subconscious works like a sponge, it's always soaking in and doing that from a very young age. Imagine all that is thrown at it from media, culture, religions, feminism, educational institutes, adults, friends. For the first 15-17 years of life one hardly discovers any ideas or arrives at any real conclusions on one's own and merely accepts what is being thrown at him, which is then integrated into the subconscious and decays into a deadly cocktail.

It's true that most people live with this muck in their subconscious throughout their lives, it's not like one has to think like Aristotle to have a job, a spouse and make a decent living on earth. But rest assured the stink from that decaying cocktail of contradictions, faith based claims eventually reaches the consciousness giving rise to twisted ideas:

The businessman or anybody who is guilty of being rich and wealthy or just well off in a third world country.

The belief that Ambani ought to fix the Mumbai's railway platforms rather than have a lavish house for himself.

The christian(or any) who feels guilty and full of shame for so much as thinking of sex (probably asks the same god to take them away who created everything!)

Voting and whole heartedly promoting the very ideologies and leaders responsible for the third world mess that the country is.

The notion that philosophy is only big talk which belongs to the academia, drug addicts and every other stereotype(stereotypes exist for a reason but that's for another post).

The last point is something to extend more on, it probably is the solution to the rest. Always notice how most people just dismiss philosophy as something only long haired drug addicts discuss after their usual kick. And observe the same people gladly follow some religion without even questioning the validity. The fact that religions themselves just are the very first philosophies mankind came up with is totally lost on them, and the fact that religions prohibit them from considering any other philosophical system is the reason why they've come to dismiss philosophy in general except the one in which they were born and raised into which they take it as the divine plan.We'll just read what Ayn Rand says about needing a philosophy:

You might claim — as most people do —
that you have never been influenced by philosophy.
I will ask you to check that claim.
Have you ever thought or said the following?
"Don't be so sure — nobody can be certain of anything."
You got that notion from David Hume (and many, many others),
even though you might never have heard of him.
Or: "This may be good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice."
You got that from Plato.
Or: "That was a rotten thing to do, but it's only human,
nobody is perfect in this world."
You got that from Augustine.
Or: "It may be true for you, but it's not true for me."
You got it from William James.
Or: "I couldn't help it! Nobody can help anything he does."
You got it from Hegel.
Or: "I can't prove it, but I feel that it's true."
You got it from Kant.
Or: "It's logical, but logic has nothing to do with reality."
You got it from Kant.
Or: "It's evil, because it's selfish."
You got it from Kant.
Have you heard the modern activists say:
"Act first, think afterward"?
They got it from John Dewey.

So there you have used and been influenced by philosophy throughtout your life, the problem?—it was all accidental. Which goes back to the previous point about how for the first many years of life we just accept whatever comes our way from whatever source and hence the urgency of a psychological clean up.